Teaching Boys the Difference Between Strength and Cruelty |
What's a Parent's Role?
Take our Authoritative Parenting Test
Find a family therapist near me
Boys often express aggression physically, while girls more often use relational aggression.
Strength becomes destructive when it is used to dominate rather than protect.
Learning to stand your ground without becoming cruel is a key step in a boy’s development.
Healthy boundaries help boys avoid becoming either bullies or victims.
Therapists sometimes use what I call a displacement story. Instead of confronting a client directly, we tell a story about someone who faced a similar situation. The client listens, recognizes something of themselves in the story, and often discovers the lesson without feeling lectured. Stories have a way of doing that as they bypass resistance and allow a person to see themselves from a different angle. In many ways, it is a version of Archetypal Psychology.
I was reminded of this recently when a client told me about a call he received from his son’s school. The principal had asked him to come in because his son had been involved in a fight. When the father arrived, the boy was sitting in the chair outside the office. He took his son’s hand and went into the principal's office. The principal explained that his son had gotten into a physical confrontation with two other boys in the hallway. “We have a strict no-aggression policy,” she told him. The punishment, she explained, would be three days of suspension.
The father listened carefully and then asked what had happened. The principal explained that the other boys had been pushing and bothering his son for several days. That afternoon things escalated, and his son finally fought back.
The father smiled and told the principal that he had been talking with his son about something very similar recently. He had been trying to teach the boy an important distinction, one that many boys have to learn as they grow up.
The difference between being a........